Saint-Michel

 This weekend I visited my great uncle Lodewijk Woltjer.  He lives for three months or so in the south of France near an observatory. 

After I got out from the shower after the pool I was out on the porch talking to Lo.  I asked him about my family, his work, and anything I could think of that would get him to talk.  My Uncle Lo is an astronomer. At 56 he retired.  He worked for ESO (European Southern Observatory), La Silla Observatory in Chile as well as for the European group on the Hubble.  He recounted stories of his time working in Chile where there is a large observatory. Originally there was an observatory about 500 km from Santiago. Then another observatory was built a little further away.  Finally Lo went out at some point and drove through the deserts and the mountains and found a spot, high on a mountain so as not to have the effects of the atmosphere and today there is an observatory on top of a mountain that my Uncle Lo discovered that is American, European and Japanese shared http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Silla_Observatory.  Lo now works on the influence of human life on our earth and how long humans can continue to survive on the world/earth they have created.  He recently published a book that he co-authored with a Frenchman about the existence of humans and the fragility and survivability of humanity on Earth.  The book titled Surviving Centuries: Can We Do It? Lo says that while the book is not projected to a completely academic audience, it is for an educated one and recently the book has begun to be translated into Chinese.  He gave a talk in 2009 that can be found on YouTube that discusses this exact theme.  Lo said that while his co-author is French, his French is not writable, however his speaking French is impeccable, even my host mother in Avignon thinks so.  Lo said that he lost interest in astronomy because human life and the environment seemed to him, more applicable and more pertinent to the human condition and the future of the world.  For this reason he switched his focus in the 1980s as he began researching for this new book.  But Lo remembers that when his mother went to church, his father would bring him up to his study and at age 6 or so, open up the Encyclopedia Britannica and show him images of the stars and galaxies.  Lo worked also for the Observatoire de Haute-Provence in Saint-Michel in the town he lives in for three months during the summer in the south of France.  This observatory is not as successful as it once was because funding is hard to come by.  The station was started because there was a rich woman from America who inherited a lot of money (from a family like Colgate).  She married an Egyptian man who wanted his own money to be spent on the other women he indulged in but he needed a profitable business with which to place his money.  So he decided to build an observatory before the war (World War II) and he first looked in Geneva but couldn’t find anything.  He came to the south of France and found this spot in Saint-Michel and built this observatory, which still stands today.  This observatory is also the same spot that recently spotted a planet outside of our galaxy that we know today.  The observatory is placed halfway up a mountain which Lo says was erroneous as the cold wet atmosphere runs down the mountain creating problems for the telescopes and therefore the observatory is not as effective as it could be.  The Mistral also poses problems and degrades the quality of the atmosphere for viewing. For these reasons, the La Silla Observatory has become the prominent research base for the European Astronomers. If only, he says, they had placed the observatory at the top, where one side of the mountain is a sheer cliff, maybe the observatory could continue to be in use.  However with the discovery of this new planet, the observatory has 5-10 more years of funding and then who knows.  Lo says that if you look you can see 15 or so telescopes, but in reality only 4 or 5 still are working.  I asked Lo later in the evening, after two bottles of rosé, if he thought humans were capable of surviving on our earth for much longer.  He said that if humans were careful and continued to live a stable equitable lifestyle, we could continue to live.  However, he noted, that we must be conscious of our production of agriculture and our use of water.  There is enough water in the world, but the problem is a lack of pipelines, which are not always able to bring water, that is pure and safe to areas that need it.  I then asked Lo if he saw the enormous orange moon from two nights ago.  He said he did, although the trees were in the way so it was difficult to see.  He said that the great size of the moon is a trick of the eye and the brain and a mystery still.  He thinks it is a psychological process that causes man to see the moon as very large. When in reality, the moon is no bigger than usual.

  

I also talked to Lo about my grandmother, Anna, his sister.  When I first sat down outside the porch he said that I reminded him so much of Anna.  And he said, when I laughed, that I was even more like her.  I never met my grandmother and it brings tears of happiness and sadness to my eyes to bring back the memory of her to my great uncle as I sit across from him.  I have heard so many stories about her, and even more tonight, but to hear that I remind him of her and that I look just like her is a gift for both he and I.  Anna was the rebellious daughter, Lo said.  Margo, if she wanted to do something, her mother let her do it, but Anna, not so much.  Anna worked for what LO called, the UNRA, United Nations Refugee Agency during the war where she met my grandfather, Janos.  Janos was undocumented, as at the time he did not have paperwork for is Hungarian citizenship.  Anna was working as a psychologist with refugees and children (Lo thinks) and at some point (that is still unclear to me) Anna was stripped of her Dutch citizenship.  My grandmother, Anna Woltjer was stateless.  Not long after Anna met Janos they boarded an immigration ship and came to America.